


The Cursed Sword

by syrupwit



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Lightsabers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 17:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6715294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/pseuds/syrupwit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways that were not the way Rey accepted Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber for the first time, and one that was.</p><p>Please note: major character death warning is not for Rey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cursed Sword

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



 

\- 1 -

 

Rey is rappelling down the middle of a Star Destroyer’s hangar bay when the world suddenly twists and she’s falling through midair.

She flails, scrabbling for a rope that’s no longer there. Her limbs strike rough fronds and hard branches. She tries to grab hold of something, but the ground’s already coming up to meet her -- too soft, a bed of earth and dead leaves.

Rey collapses from bent knees onto a forest floor. She sucks in lungfuls of humid, rot-sweet air, and tries to figure out what just kriffing happened.

“Little help here?” calls someone from beneath her.

Rey starts. She crouches, cautious, and crawls toward the source of the sound. A little ways away, a wide-mouthed pit yawns below her -- an opening in the earth, with a human boy at the dark bottom of it. Their eyes meet, and he frowns, then smiles.

“Force,” he sighs. “I thought I’d be stuck down here all day. Hey, can you give me a hand? I’ve been trying, but the sides are all slimy, and.” He grimaces, raising hands caked with mud as well as less identifiable substances.

Rey stares at him. He stares back.

“Get a branch or something?” he suggests. Still staring, she backs up and does.

“Now, uh, lower it to me,” he directs, when she’s less than quick about it.

“Have some patience and don’t order me around,” she snaps. But she does lower the branch, warily, keeping an eye on him like he’ll explode as he clambers up the side of the pit.

The branch slips from her hand at the last moment. She grabs for it, but he’s faster, striking out with a pole of blue light to anchor himself on the ridge.

“Oh shit, don’t tell my master,” he laughs. She stares at the hilt in his hand where the blade vanished. She takes him in -- the tunic, the weird braid. She’s heard of things like that weapon, but never seen one. She had thought they were a myth. So he -- this means he must be --

“Hey, whose padawan are you?” he asks. “I thought I’d met everyone on this mission, but I haven‘t seen you before.”

Rey rushes at him and bumps into him hard, knocking him over. Then she runs.

He shouts something behind her, but she doesn’t look back. The burn in her legs and lungs feels good, like freedom. Especially since she’s taken his weapon.

“Obi-Wan’s _really_ going to kill me this time,” the boy groans to himself. Rey’s already too far away to hear.

 

 

\- 2 -

 

News of the hidden wreck spreads fast. Within days it’s been picked over by every scavenger in a hundred-mile radius of the place, and everyone has forgotten that Rey was the one who first found it.

Well, almost everyone. “I’ve got my eye on you, girl,” grunts Unkar Plutt, squinting like he’s trying to read her mind. Like she’s got some kind of line on a whole array of forgotten, treasure-laden ships, and is just holding the knowledge back from everybody else.

Well, she doesn’t. The whole thing was a bust. The next time she finds something good, she’s keeping it a secret forever. Rey shed blood -- nearly died, in fact -- climbing down into the remote and treacherous ravine where the Imperial shuttle met its final rest, and all she has to show for it now are a bunch of old medical supplies she’ll probably never use, a few extra portions she’s already mostly eaten, and the suspicion of Unkar Plutt. And this weird metal cylinder she found shoved behind some dead battery packs in a supply closet, but whatever.

Curiosity or boredom gets the better of her one evening. She takes the cylinder out and tinkers with it, trying to get it open. Is it some kind of puzzle? A weapon? A bomb? She really hopes it’s not a bomb. Maybe it’s a secret message encrypted by Rebels. Maybe it’s a ridiculously complicated and unusually shaped jewelry box. Maybe it’s just a hunk of nameless junk, and she’ll spend hours taking it to pieces and find nothing inside --

A blade shoots from the cylinder and flares to life. Rey shouts and drops it, stumbles back. She fumbles for the handle again, recoiling as she feels the vibration through the metal, and manages to shut it off. Cold sweat soaks her clothes, and an unfamiliar energy hums through her body, laced with currents of anguish and fear. She kicks the thing into the far corner and vows to bury it as soon as she gets up the nerve to touch it again.

The following night, the scarred man starts showing up in her dreams.

 

 

\- 3 -

 

Rey’s opponent lies crumpled at her feet. The old master Knight, defeated by the new. The weak, cut down at the hands of the strong. Etc., etc. Things are as they should be.

Leader Snoke said she could take whatever she wanted. So she does, rifling through the dead man’s robes and evaluating each possession in turn: decent boots, laughable helmet, underarmor scuffed and scored by her blade. His primitive lightsaber, with its cracked and raging crystal, holds no use for her even as a trophy.

She searches his body with increasing frustration, discarding rings, a small blunt knife, a tarnished medal on a chain around his neck. His gloves are nice, but she _has_ gloves. And he’s already starting to stink.

Then she finds it. On his belt, crushed and hidden under his weight, is the hilt of another lightsaber. It’s old -- she can tell that much -- but it’s in near-pristine condition, and it ignites in shining blue, pale and perfect.

She clips it to her own belt, on the hip not adorned by her double saber. It makes her feel powerful and good, the weight of both handles swinging at her sides as she goes to face the next trial.

 

 

\- 4 -

 

The old hermit’s place takes Rey and her master a week to find once they set out from Mos Eisley. She suspects they might have gotten there faster if he hadn’t insisted she carry him half the way. Regardless, there they go -- a week of meditating under the twin sunsets; crouching behind rocks for hours to hide from the native inhabitants; and hoisting her master onto her back to descend yet another steep and rocky incline into a shaded, forbidding canyon, then levitating their speeder to the bottom, usually by herself. And the heat. _Force_ , the heat. And the thirst. And the...everything, really.

At least Tatooine is a beautiful planet. She didn't think so when they arrived -- Rey prefers water, trees, and _people_ \-- but it’s starting to grow on her. Hopefully this isn’t a symptom of twin-sun-induced madness.

The hermitage, when they finally arrive there, feels more like a crypt than a home. Sand-warped furniture and rusted appliances fill the main room, while smaller, darker chambers hold moisture stores, expired rations, and the datacubes and scrolls that Rey’s master was seeking. There is no sign of the inhabitant, though they know he must have died here.

Rey finds a chest in one of the rooms. Inside are some old papers that crumble when she touches them, a stained tunic, and -- wrapped inside a belt -- a lightsaber.

She draws the lightsaber. It’s bright blue, a little faded but still strong. The construction is old, but not ancient. She brings it out to show her master.

“Young Skywalker’s lightsaber, that was.” Master Yoda avoids her gaze, turns away. “Better, it would be, that it had been lost forever.”

Rey knows the name Skywalker. She knows that a boy of that name was once a Jedi Knight, and that he fell to the Dark. His twin children bore that name as well, were raised in darkness, and eventually both chose the Light. None of them exist in this galaxy anymore.

That evening they meditate out on the sand. The sunsets are still beautiful, but Rey can’t focus. She keeps turning it over and over in her mind, like a tumbled stone -- these stories she knows only in part, the depth of history around her. The aching sadness of the nameless, bodiless hermit. _There is no emotion, there is peace._ Night comes quickly, and she does not sleep.

 

 

\- 5 -

 

“It is your destiny, my girl.”

Maz’s eyes are kind, but there’s no comfort in them. Master Luke is shielding himself from her, or perhaps shielding her from him; she can’t tell. Her mouth is dry just looking at the lightsaber. She can’t take it, she can’t.

The other students are all waiting in the ship. They need to get back to the Resistance base and report to the General. They’re running out of time. Rey can’t afford to stand here like this, paralyzed, while Ben -- while that thing that ate Ben musters his forces ( _her friends, gone_ ) and tracks them, comes to take her back to his new master like he’d threatened. Sworn. She can’t do this. They’re counting on her.

Rey looks to Master Luke. He’s still shielded, but his face is open. She trusts him with her life. She would trust him with the fate of the whole universe, if it came down to it.

“You can take it,” he says.

Rey does.

 

 

\- +1 -

 

Blood darkens the snow. Finn lies slumped, unmoving. Rey can’t look, she can barely see. The small, bright flicker she had just started to associate with him has gone dim in her mind, though not yet completely dark. She can’t afford to think about that now.

Across the clearing the monster shakes and sweats, straining and afraid.

The sword calls to her again. It calls out and she, finally, answers. The other reaches for it with his big black claws, but it flies to her hand. _Hers_.

Han Solo is dead. Finn is dying. She’s been alone for so long, and in minutes she may be dead too. But there’s a tower of light in her hands now, a hum settling into her veins, and she knows at last what she needs to do.

Rey takes her stance and prepares to fight.


End file.
